


Six Years at the BPD

by omg_wtf_yeah



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-07
Updated: 2010-06-07
Packaged: 2017-10-09 23:24:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omg_wtf_yeah/pseuds/omg_wtf_yeah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An overview of the first six years of Rodney's partnership with John Sheppard at the Baltimore Police Department. SGA fusion with Homicide: Life on the Street.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Years at the BPD

The first year, everywhere Rodney looks, he sees Adena Watson, scarlet jacket in the pouring rain, surrounded by detectives, beat cops and passers-by who come out, rain or shine, to see the body; the broken body of a little girl. He catalogues the scene just as he saw it. He's a genius, so it's dismayingly easy to recollect details like that. He's missing something and he knows that; Sheppard knows it and he keeps it a poor secret that he does.

"C'mon, McKay, the longer you take solving this, the less likely it is to happen."

His first case as primary and Rodney lost before he began. Adena's not like the puzzles he's so good at – he can't put the pieces back in place. She was dead when they got there. He couldn't have saved her. But he can't put it out of his mind. Nothing's difficult for Rodney but dealing with people, so failing Adena is unbearable. He looks at it from every angle but can't put the case down.

"Look," Sheppard says in the box after Risley Tucker was led out, his hand bandaged from dragging the old man around, "you got unlucky. It happens to everyone. You've gotta let it go." It's easy for him to say – he doesn't have Adena's name on the board under his in red. He wasn't primary.

Months pass. Years pass. Sheppard and he work well together. They're good as partners, good in other ways, as well; ways Rodney tries not to think about. They investigate Sullivan, Biddle, Frandina, and a host of other corpses ended violently. They argue, discuss, debate, talk, talk, talk. They talk about everything because they're in the car a lot, driving to and from scenes, and if they're not in the car they're waiting for an autopsy report, and if they're not doing that, they're waiting to testify in court.

Success follows success and it's not just Sheppard closing cases. Actually, it's probably more him than Sheppard. He's a genius, after all. They say McKay's the hardest working detective in Homicide. The black marker on the board confirms it.

It's easier to bear Munch's unimpressed look or the pity he imagines in Gee's face. The clearance rate helps. He starts to feel the easy superiority he'd previously indulged in. He can't let Adena go but he never had a chance to save her life or avenge her death and there are a lot of other deaths that need avenging.

Six years on, Rodney has so much on his mind all the time already, he tries not to think a lot about John's easy, lanky frame in his mussed suit, that big, black watch that Gee points out is hardly BPD dress code. Things like that are tough not to notice.

John shrugs, nonchalantly replying that things are different for murder police, so he can get away with fudging the rules a little.

Fudging the rules a little is one thing, and, in a general sense, Rodney agrees with him but as Chris Rawls sits across from John, giving him his undivided attention through the entirety of their interview, Rodney wonders just how different things are for detectives – if Chris Rawls might be on the list of what's okay to blur the lines with. It's unsurprisingly pretty irritating.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the crossover challenge at [McSheplets](http://community.livejournal.com/mcsheplets/).


End file.
